Suggests people choose canines who resemble themselves
Long the subject of speculation, a new study says that dogs DO resemble their owners. At least this is the case with purebred canines, according to new research conducted at the University of California, San Diego, by social psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld and his UCSD colleague, Michael Roy. The full study, Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners?, appears in the May issue of Psychological Science, the journal of the American Psycholog
Authors call on physicians and parents to engage players in discussions about media violence and its implications
A new study finds that Teen-rated video games contain significant amounts of violence and death. Led by researchers at the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Kids Risk Project at the Harvard School of Public Health, the study appears March 12 in Medscape General Medicine (www.medgenmed.com), the first and only online, peer-reviewed pri
Current measures which fail to significantly predict whether sexual offenders will repeat their crime could be improved by taking into account psychological and lifestyle factors. These factors could also enhance risk assessment for violent offenders.
This is the conclusion of Leam Craig, of Forensic Psychology Practice Ltd and Anthony Beech and Kevin Browne of the Psychology Department at Birmingham University, who will present their research today, Monday 22 March 2004, at the British Psy
Seemingly incidental emotions can influence the prices at which individuals buy and sell goods, according to a groundbreaking study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
While prior research has found that people set a higher price for objects they own than they themselves would be willing to pay—which economists call the endowment effect—the Carnegie Mellon study found that people who are sad actually are willing to accept less money to sell something than they would pay for the s
In the way magic eye posters simultaneously hide and reveal the main point of the picture, new research suggests that children might well be asking more than their simply-worded questions seem to indicate.
Normally, adults assume that when children ask, “What is this?” in reference to an object, they are seeking merely a name–some kind of label to help differentiate the elements of their rapidly burgeoning universes. However, a new study explored the possibility that children posing such
Despite conventional wisdom, simply watching television is not related to a child’s weight, but playing video games may be, new research indicates.
“Children with higher weight status spent moderate amounts of time playing electronic games, while children with lower weight status spent either little or a lot of time playing electronic games,” say Elizabeth A. Vandewater, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Texas in the Journal of Adolescence. “Moderate” play, while it sounds benign,
The emotion control center of the brain, the amygdala, shows significantly higher levels of activation in males viewing sexual visual stimuli than females viewing the same images, according to a Center for Behavioral Neuroscience study led by Emory University psychologists Stephan Hamann and Kim Wallen. The finding, which appears in the April edition of “Nature Neuroscience,” demonstrates how men and women process visual sexual stimuli differently, and it may explain gender variations in reproductiv
Research at the University of Sheffield, published today in Nature, has solved the mystery of why women live so long after their reproductive years have ceased. Basically, grandmothers can ensure the success of their own family by helping to increase the reproductive success of their adult children, thus propagating their own genes.
Dr. Virpi Lummaa and her PhD student Mirkka lahdenperä, from the University of Sheffield and Turku in Finland, examined the family histories of women in Finland
Parents who lose a child have an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study published in the March 9 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study found that parents whose child died were 50 percent more likely to develop MS than parents who did not lose a child.
The results show that psychological stress may play a role in the development of MS. Researchers have believed that stress plays a role in MS, b
It appears the brain builds a repertoire of rote responses to frequently encountered problems to save time and effort
New studies suggest that humans might prefer to switch their brains to automatic pilot whenever possible to conserve their cogitating resources.
For example, when learning skills such as arithmetic, the brain doesn’t necessarily reach back into its basic calculating skills for each problem, suggested the researchers who made the finding. Rather, the brain bui
A review of previously published studies suggests that among patients with chronic health conditions, Tai Chi appears to have beneficial effects on balance, flexibility, and cardiovascular health, according to a review article in the March 8 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
According to the article, Tai Chi is a traditional Chinese martial art that has been practiced in China for centuries. Tai Chi combines deep breathing with relaxation and po
Aggressive 15 year olds who attended religious services, felt attached to their schools or were exposed to good family management were much less likely to have engaged in violent behavior by the time they turned 18, according to a new multi-ethnic study of urban youth by University of Washington researchers.
The study also showed that the likelihood of violence at 18 among aggressive youth was reduced when they had been exposed to several of what are called protective factors, even when the
fMRI shows certain brain areas “light up” as we learn
Memories do indeed light up the corners of our mind, just as the songwriter said.
Scientific evidence for this notion comes from studies using magnetic resonance imaging to examine the living human brain. These studies show that certain brain areas “light up” as an individual is learning information.
Scientists had previously established that people remember emotionally charged events and facts better than neutr
Environmental characteristics of bars, as well as women’s behavior in bars, influence their risk for bar-related aggression, according to a study conducted by researchers in the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).
The study showed that heavy drinking, going to and leaving a bar with individuals not well-known to the women and talking to a greater number of individuals while in the bar environment are social behaviors associated with bar-related aggression. The c
Women who used the once-a-week birth control patch, ORTHO EVRA® (norelgestromin/ethinyl estradiol transdermal system), were more likely to use their medication as directed than women who took a birth control pill, according to a study published in the current issue of Contraception.
“It’s not always easy, but it is very important for women using any birth control pill to take it at the same time every day to prevent unplanned pregnancy,” said Vanessa Cullins, M.D. FACOG. “What’s exciting i
Chocolate bars and other supermarket products might sell better from green-coloured point-of-sale stands, Cathrine Jansson will tell delegates at a meeting of the SCI (Society of Chemical Industry) on 3 March. She will be previewing results of new research on the effect of colour on consumers’ behaviour which suggests that we spot green items faster than any other colour tested.
New research
Research into effective design and packaging usually focuses on brand awareness. Jan
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